Page 53 of Twins for the Mafia Heir

No, I can’t think of it. Not while I’m supposed to be comforting Sidony. I don’t want my hands, stroking tenderly through her hair, to twitch into fists.

Instead, I focus my eyes outside the car. The Ashwood house was situated outside the heart of London, but we still have miles to go before we leave the city behind. As long as there are cars around and behind us, I refuse to relax my shoulders even an inch. No matter how many times I look out the back windshield, I can’t confirm we aren’t being followed. Achilles keeps glancing in his mirrors too, checking for any vehicle that could be a tail.

Eventually, though, the metropolis does thin out, replaced by more trees and fields and smaller neighborhoods. The brown ribbon of the Thames winds in and out of the view, until at last we join a highway going north. And as the sky grows dark with stormy clouds and the rain begins to pour, we finally break free into the rolling green country.

Sidony’s salt-crusted eyes are finally closed, her breathing deep and even. I don’t stop brushing her hair with my fingers, terrified the slightest change to her environment will wake her again. Achilles, when he speaks, keeps his voice low as well.

“We’re going to be driving for a while. It doesn’t seem like we’ve been followed out of the city, though, so we can probably stop for food and a break in a few hours.”

“Where are we going?” I murmur.

“I have a safe house in Scotland,” Achilles says. “Edinburgh. It’s an Ashwood house.” He’s quiet for a moment before adding, “Fantasia knows nothing about it.”

I’ve always been an only child, so I can’t possibly understand what he’s feeling right now. Having your sister invade your house and try to kill or capture you and your daughter has to be one of the worst ways you can be betrayed by your own family. And I do understand being betrayed by family.

I wish I could comfort him by sharing something about my dad, something that can help him feel less alone… but I’m not Emma Clarke, daughter of a physically abusive father, right now. I’m Raleigh Warwick, daughter of an emotionally distant father who would never actually strike me. And I won’t make up some story like I am Raleigh, not right now.

I’m really starting to get tired of being someone I’m not.

Instead, I ask quietly, “What happened between the two of you?”

Achilles is quiet for so long that I think he’ll ignore my question. I really don’t want to spend several hours in a tensely silent car, but I also won’t force him to blurt out his family drama.

“Our mum,” he says, his voice full of bitter gravel. “That’s what happened.”

The mother that married into the Warwick family. Is there simmering resentment between Achilles and Fantasia based on their different fathers, or their different birthrights? Achilles immediately debunks this theory.

“Our mother, Veronica,” he says, clearing his throat, “was very young when she married my father, and loved him obsessively. To be honest, I don’t think she ever loved anyone as much as she loved him, not even her own children. He died in a raid by the NCA- that’s the British FBI, essentially- on one ofour most profitable casinos in Whitechapel. His death wasn’t the goal of the raid of course, he just got caught in the crossfire. And who worked with insiders in the NCA to orchestrate that raid? Marcus Warwick, naturally.”

My mouth falls open. “But- didn’t your mother marry-”

Achilles nods, his mouth a tight pale line. “She did indeed. Not many other people in the Ashwood family cared about her late husband and the cause of his death quite as much as Veronica did. They were more concerned about the blow to their profit margin, and how to rebuild without drawing Marcus’s eye again. This completely alienated Veronica from her own family, and she took it upon herself to get her own revenge against the man who accidentally killed her husband.”

Achilles falls silent. I notice he’s said nothing about the toll losing his father- and his mother, in her own way- took on him as a child. I wonder if Veronica didn’t learn from the way her family’s neglect made her feel, and ended up projecting that same neglect onto her son.

“How old were you?” I ask, when his silence stretches out.

His brown eyes blink in the rearview mirror. “I was eight, I believe? It might sound monstrous of me, but I hardly knew my father when he died, or my mother for that matter. They were obsessed with themselves, and I was my grandfather’s heir. He kept me busy with my training, and I lived a fulfilling enough life being raised by him and my grandmother.”

“It doesn’t sound monstrous,” I say quickly. “Youdon’t sound monstrous, I mean.”

I see his eyes squint a little, and know he’s giving me a wry smile. “You disapprove of my parents,” he says, without offense.

I flush anyway. I lost my father much later in life, but I suppose his death was a relief instead of a loss. “I… can’t judge,” I say lamely.

Achilles chuckles, but there’s a bitter edge to it. “Anyway,” he goes on, “my mother wormed her way into Marcus’s circle and began to whisper in his ear about an alliance between the Warwick and Ashwood families. She succeeded in seducing him- much to his brother, Thomas Sr.’s, chagrin. They split, which weakened the Warwicks all on its own before Veronica and Marcus even married. A couple years later, Fantasia Warwick was born. I was thirteen when she was born, and absolutely taken with her.”

For the first time, his voice goes rough with emotion. His parents might be distant or disappointing figures in his past, but there’s a deep well of feelings between Achilles and his little sister. Again, I can’t relate to the bonds between siblings, but I wonder if Achilles feels more parental responsibility toward Fantasia than even he knows.

“Of course, after Veronica married into the Warwick family, she did what she could to make Marcus’s life difficult without drawing too much of his ire. She spent wild amounts of his money, fixed his accounts so he stopped trusting his business partners were paying him the proper tithe, and poisoned several of his best generals until they died. But her favorite plan, the one she poured the most effort into, was her own daughter.

“I-” Achilles’s hands work over the steering wheel, his knuckles whitening again. “I knew our mum meant nothing good for her. My grandfather didn’t care to interfere- his daughter had managed to get Marcus Warwick off his back, which was more than he ever expected from her apparently. It was up to me to keep Fantasia grounded. I was her constant playmate, especially when she was an infant and Mum couldn’t be bothered. I practically displaced her tutors to make sure she got an education as expansive as my grandfather gave me. And I made sure she knew that she could tell me about anything, even things Mum did that upset her.”

Considering how Fantasia turned out and what their relationship looks like now, I can only assume his efforts failed. “What did she want with Fantasia?” I ask, but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion I know.

“To usurp Marcus,” Achilles says, with a stiff shrug. “What better use for a daughter you made with a man you hate? Fantasia Warwick, a woman of her own blood, would be Marcus’s replacement as head of the Warwick family. Of course, she would be a mere puppet that Veronica would rule through.”

His next words he speaks with no emotion whatsoever. Not grief or frustration or even black glee. There’s just a void where a parental figure could have been, but never was.

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